SPOILERS: The Books

CONTENT: Various characters, mixed pairings, Gen

RATING: PG13 for language and suggestion

CLASSIFICATION: Drama, Angst, Humour

WARNING(S): Keep an eye on the individual headers.

SUMMARY: I can too write short stories!  Well ... short-ish.

DISCLAIMER: The Harry Potter series and all the characters associated with it are the property solely of J. K. Rowling, her agents and publishers.  No infringement of any rights is intended from the creation of this story.  Nor is any money being made from it.  This story is written solely for the entertainment of me and my friends; please do not redistribute without my permission.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The Fridge Poetry Original Kit, which provided the prompts for these flashfics.  The basic ideas for "Remember" and "Rain" were suggested by Madambeetroot; many thanks!

NOTES: It occurs to me that I haven't written very much this year; I partly put it down to finishing Two Households and struggling a bit with its "successors", Inmates and Checkmate, but I seem to have been stuck for new inspiration too.  And I haven't written much in the way of genuinely short fics lately.  I was going to ask people for prompts to try and get my brain moving, but totally by coincidence I found my magnetic Fridge Poetry Kit the other day, and decided to pull random words out and see what I could do.  These ficlets are the result.  I tried to stick to characters, pairings or situations I wouldn't normally write about, although inevitably there was a couple about my favourite character :-)  See what you think.

The Fridge Poetry Flashfics

by Mad Martha

Float

Post-Deathly Hallows

Ron Weasley/Hermione Granger, Harry Potter

Angst, Gen, PG

Every now and then Ron will dream that he is underwater again, his body floating weightless and cool, surrounded by pale green light and silence.  There is no fear, only a sense of waiting, dreaming of stillness, until he comes to rescue them from the depths of the lake.  He always comes.  Ron never has any doubts of it while he's dreaming.

It's only when he wakes with a jolt, almost a physical slamming into the mattress beneath him, and lies there gasping for breath, that he begins to doubt.  He remembers every ignoble moment in his life, every petty argument, and wonders why Harry keeps coming back for him.  How he, Ron, can possibly still be the thing Harry misses the most when he's such a poor friend to him.

On nights like this, when he's lying there trembling in the aftermath of the dream and tortured by his own inadequacies, he'll turn his head cautiously to one side and look at Hermione.  She sleeps very neatly and peacefully, apparently untroubled by old fears and anxieties.  He wonders if she too sometimes dreams of the lake and its stillness, of waiting to be rescued by the person who misses her the most, and whether afterwards she wakes to question herself. 

He does not touch her at these times, but folds the quilt around himself lightly, imagining it to be the subtle touch of dark green weed, and tries to fall back into the dream of floating, where he still knows with certainty that Harry will come for him again.

Glance

Order of the Phoenix era

Anthony Goldstein

Angst, Pre-slash, PG

Anthony Goldstein has read about legilimancy and sometimes thinks that as a man it would be a useful skill to have in his arsenal.  There aren't many things for which he envies girls, but easy and confident communication is one of them, and their apparent ability to communicate via an impressive range of body language alone.  To a girl, a glance can communicate a whole conversation.  To a boy, a glance is usually just a glance - no more than a quick flick of the eyes or twitch of the brows, a smirk or a sneer, terminated almost before it's fully sent.

And sometimes it isn't.  Or is it?  That's what's so hard to judge, and so potentially lethal if one misreads it.  One wrong turn and by lunchtime the entire school will know that Goldstein was eyeing up another bloke.  No one wants to be labelled a poofter, a nancy, or a bent sickle, or be ostracised in the dormitory and bathrooms.

Besides, he's imagining things.  Harry Potter isn't the kind of bloke who gives another bloke the eye.  He's fooling himself that the look Harry just gave him went on any longer than usual, or that there was something in that glance - a tiny hint of a smile on his lips, a meaningful intensity in his green eyes - that could mean anything other than What the fuck are you staring at, pervert?

Maybe there's just ink on his face and Harry's trying to decide how to tell him.  It's not like he can take a quick peek in a pocket mirror after all, is it?  He's a bloke.  Only girls carry mirrors around to check their faces in.

And even if - if! - Harry was trying to communicate something more ... personal, what could he do about it?  Smile back?  Pass him a note?  Touch him?  Don't be daft.  He's a bloke.  They both are.  Blokes don't do that sort of thing.

No, it's just a glance.  Better not to make anything of it.

There aren't many things for which Anthony Goldstein envies girls, but sometimes one of them is being female.

Glitter

Post-Marauder era

Remus Lupin

Angst, PG

It's curious how the smallest things can trigger the most pain.

The jar is a tiny thing, a shallow glass pot with a cheap lacquer lid, small enough to be hidden in the palm of a hand, or in the tightly-stretched hip pocket of a pair of jeans.  It's lying upside down in the corner of the trunk under a tangle of socks, t-shirts and old school jumpers, and Remus wouldn't have found it at all if he wasn't busy sorting someone else's belongings from his own as a prelude to burning them.  It's a foolhardy act for someone as badly-off as himself; he really can't afford to destroy perfectly good clothes when they fit him almost as well as his own and are in better condition besides.  But he hasn't yet learned the important lesson of swallowing pride - or bile - in favour of practicality, and his werewolf's sense of smell revolts at the familiar musk-and-sweat on these things.

The little jar makes him pause for a second.  He picks it up, turns it over between his fingertips and, quite without intending to, unscrews the lid.  It's half-full of a solid, iridescent substance and when he dabs a finger on it and brushes it over the back of his hand, the smear is multi-hued and glitters like a cheap Muggle Christmas card.

The sight of it instantly throws him back to a scene witnessed on so many occasions, of a slender and aristocratic fingertip brushing the merest fairy-dust hint of the stuff under intense grey eyes and across high, sculpted cheekbones.  As if someone already so beautiful ever needed that extra glam-rock artifice to attract attention and admiration.

Such a beautiful, glittering shell to house the soul of a treacherous monster.

Remus hurls the jar into the broken crate he's been tossing Sirius's things into, and wishes he could toss his heart in after it.

Paradise

Marauder era

Lily Evans/James Potter

Drama, Humour, PG13

"You know," Lily says, sitting back and trying to not sound as petulant as she feels, "for someone who's been trying to get into my knickers since we were fifteen, you're not very enthusiastic when you finally get the opportunity."

"I wasn't trying to get into your knickers exactly," James mutters, rather red-faced.

"We're in my bedroom, half-naked," Lily points out.

"I meant when we were fifteen!" he retorts.  "It's more like I was trying to get your attention - I hadn't thought much further than that back then."

"And yet, here we are.  You've got my complete, undivided attention, James.  Have at ye."  As her bra is already on the floor, Lily tucks a thumb into the side of her knickers and snaps the elastic by way of encouragement.

If anything, he seems even more unnerved by this. 

"Aren't you a bit …"

"What?"

"Well … nervous?"  He certainly is.  He doesn't seem quite able to look her in the eyes.  "I mean, we should slow down, it's your first time - "

"No, it's not."  Lily stifles a giggle at the look on his face.  "James!  You haven't been holding back because you think I'm a blushing virgin, have you?  That's very sweet of you, but you can relax."

"I … you … what?"

She's expecting outrage, not the look of dismay and increased anxiety on his face.

"You're not my first boyfriend," she tells him in her most reasonable tone, and wonders if his natural arrogance - admittedly not so much on show these days - is going to make him difficult.  "You knew that already.  Does it matter?"

James flops back against her lacy pillows and covers his face with one hand.

"James?"

He mumbles something unintelligible.  What little she can see of his face is rather red and, anticipating his reaction, Lily grows annoyed.

"You know, this is the nineteen seventies!  Expecting me to stay a virgin for the oh-so-special you, while you do whatever the hell you like, is insulting and patronising and - "  She stops abruptly, for he's lowered his hand and he's grinning at her ruefully.  "What?"

"It's just the irony," he explains, although he still looks rather embarrassed.  "You didn't wait."

Lily sits up and folds her arms huffily.  "It's my body, Potter!"

He nods, spreading his hands placatingly.  "Absolutely!  It's just … well … I waited, that's all."

Lily blinks, absorbing this, then her eyes go huge.  "You … you mean you haven't - ?"  The humour of this suddenly strikes her and she gives a delighted peal of laughter, flopping out beside him again.

To his credit, James laughs too and for several minutes they lie side by side, giggling like children.

After a while, Lily gently punches his shoulder.  "You have such a nerve!  Offering to 'take me to paradise', when you've never actually done it before!"

"Hey, I thought you hadn't either!  How was I to know you'd done the full package tour at least once already?"

"I wouldn't call it a package tour exactly," she admits, considering the matter.  "More like a brief stopover … passing through on the way to somewhere else."

"You didn't stop to look at the sights then?"

He sounds rather wistful now; she smiles.  "There was nothing really worth looking at," she assures him.

"Ah.  I always thought paradise must be overrated," James observes.

Lily reaches for him.  "Tell you what," she says affectionately, "how about I give you a guided tour and you decide for yourself?"

Rain

Circa Half Blood Prince

Seamus/Dean/Pansy

Humour, PG13

 

After the Quidditch practice Pansy makes her way down from the Slytherin stands, tripping a little in places on the worn wooden steps and scanning the pitch to see where Draco has got to.  Lately he's been very elusive; he probably has a new fuck-toy he's sneaking off with. She's learned to ignore this with cool indifference, although she's far from resigned to the situation, as he'll one day find out.

Without him around she supposes she should head back to the common room.  Maybe Daphne or Tracy will be there and she can talk them into accompanying her on an impromptu patrol.  There's a rumour that Draco's been spending a lot of time in a second floor bathroom.  If that's the best he can do for himself, she wants witnesses when she 'finds' him.  The Malfoys aren't as important as they like to think they are anymore.

The rain that starts just as she reaches the ground, and it's torrential.  Within moments Pansy's soaked and the half-baked plan to head for the common room has been abandoned in favour of finding shelter until this is done.  She ducks under the stands and takes a little-known shortcut to an even lesser-known door into an old storage room beneath one of the viewing platforms.  It's old and dusty but at least it's dry, and she gasps with relief as the door shuts behind her softly.

"Lumos."

Not that she needs the dim light of her wand to tell her that her hair has been washed out of its carefully-styled bob, her dark green leggings are like a particularly unpleasant second skin, and her pale silver t-shirt is almost translucent and clinging to her breasts.  She'd regret not wearing a bra if she wasn't above such mundane considerations.

Pity Draco isn't here to see her, though.  Rather a waste.

A shuffling sound and muffled groan make her go still for a moment, listening warily.  Apparently she's not the only one to take shelter here after all.  The room is narrow but it runs the length of the stand, and after a moment Pansy decides to investigate.  She's a prefect, after all.

Not a dozen yards from the door she strikes pure gold, the kind Slytherins live for.  Two wands are lit and propped up in an empty jar on a shelf, illuminating a scene that would make Colin Creevey's camera spontaneously combust.

"Well, well," she says, deeply amused.  "If it isn't Finnigan and Thomas.  Just getting out of the rain, were you?"

Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas freeze, staring at her like rabbits under the eyes of a cobra.  Their sodden scarlet t-shirts and old jeans are in a tangled ball on the floor, testament to their own encounter with the downpour - and to their eagerness to get at each other.

Really, it's a very nice view, Pansy has to admit.  Well worth getting soaked for and the sight almost makes up for Draco's slippery behaviour.  Thomas is like sculpted ebony in the chancy wand-light; Finnigan his ivory opposite.  They're better endowed than she would have expected of a pair of Mudblooded Gryffindors, and even the shock of seeing her hasn't lessened anything.

Pansy runs the tip of her tongue over her lips slowly and pushes her bosom out a little, putting on a display.  "Into each life a little rain must fall," she says cryptically, and she raises a brow at them.  "Room for one more?"

Finnigan justifies his inflated reputation, recovering first and raising a sandy brow back at her.

"Sure."

Remember

Post-Deathly Hallows

Neville Longbottom/?

Humour, PG13

Neville finds the knot in the corner of his handkerchief at lunchtime and for the life of him he can't remember why he put it there.  Which is an irony, really, because he put it there precisely so that he wouldn't forget the thing that he's obviously forgotten.

It occupies part of his mind all afternoon, through a single Herbology lesson and a double, and then continues to torment him through dinner and the supervision of a detention.  He worries at it like a sore tooth as he marks essays and makes a last minute check on the incubator in greenhouse four. 

It's not his Gran's birthday yet and Lily Potter's Christening isn't until the ninth.  The meeting with his parents' healers was last week.  He still has plenty of toothpaste and shaving cream, the house-elves have his formal robes to launder, and there's already a note tucked under the corner of his blotter pad about the plant pots and seed trays.

Memory has never been Neville's strong point, he freely admits, but this is annoying.

It's not until he's belatedly putting last night's clothes in the laundry basket that a whiff of expensive cologne and a stray silver-blond hair on his discarded boxers triggers - something - at the back of his mind.  Ah yes, last night ...  A smug grin tugs at the corner of his mouth for a moment.  There are advantages to having a Floo with external access, and even more to being someone no one ever suspects of having a less than spotless reputation.

Then he turns out the pockets of the robe and finds an unopened strip of contraceptive charms.  That's what he forgot.

Oh, bugger. 

Spring

Marauder era

James Potter, Sirius Black

Humour, Gen, PG

"Why can't I drive the bike for a change?" James asks.

"Because you're a prat," Sirius says.  "Besides, you'll only crash it."

"I won't, wanker." 

The insults are automatic, like terms of endearment, and reassuring in their own way.  

James smirks at him.  "I've been flying anything that can take off, and a dozen things that can't, since before I could walk," he brags, and Sirius has to concede the point.  No one who saw the Great Hatstand Race of 1976 would argue with him.  Few people are as comfortable in the air as James Potter.

"All right then," he says, putting on a long-suffering sigh, "but I'm riding pillion, just in case, and you'd better not get arsey if I have to take over steering.  She's a sensitive piece of machinery."

"So am I," James mutters, sotto voce, and he hops onto the front of the bike before Sirius can change his mind.

Sirius swings a leg over the pillion seat ... and yelps, jumping off again.  James sniggers.

"What the fuck - there's a bloody spring sticking out of the seat!"

"Well yeah," James says, as though this should be obvious.  "Why do you think I want to ride up front for a change?"

Wood

Deathly Hallows

Ron Weasley

Drama, Gen, PG

Ron had his fill of woods and forests when he was twelve and he and Harry went into the Forbidden Forest to face Aragog.  To him, woods mean uncomfortable conditions and unpleasant surprises, and nothing he's encountered in woodlands since has changed his mind about that.  But Dumbledore's Deluminator has led him to the Forest of Dean in search of Hermione and Harry, so it's once more into woods for him and there's no point in complaining about it, even when he goes around and around in circles looking for them and reluctantly concludes that he'll have to sleep under a tree that night.

There's no one but himself to blame for his predicament, after all.  A night out in the nasty, snowy forest is no more than he deserves really, after deserting them in the first place.  (Something tells him that Hermione will agree with this all too happily.)

Then he sees it - a flash of silver in the chancy light.  At first he thinks he's imagining it, but the silvery glow is moving steadily up ahead of him.  Ron snaps the Deluminator shut and quickens his step, while trying his best not to step on anything that might betray him.  There is something moving several lengths behind the glow, keeping pace with it.

As he gets closer the glow resolves itself into a patronus - a silver form like a deer, and although it doesn't look quite as he remembers, there is only one person Ron knows who casts a deer-shaped patronus.

Harry.

And there he is!  But what in Merlin's name is he doing, out here in the middle of nowhere, alone, following his patronus through the trees?  Ron puts on a burst of speed but he's far too far behind to have a hope of catching up any time soon.  Worse, he has the oddest sensation that they're not alone out here, although he can't put a finger on why; he keeps thinking he sees something in the trees out of the corner of his eye, but when he looks directly at it there's nothing there.

Both the patronus and Harry disappear into the distance, and now Ron begins to run, less concerned about making noise and leaving tracks than in catching up.  Something's not right here.  Harry might need him.

There's a faint crash and a splash, a sound Ron recognises from home; the pond at the Burrow makes the same noise when they break the ice on it in the winter.  He trips on a root buried in the snow and lands heavily, but without even thinking about it he's rolling to his feet again and forging ahead.  There's a clearing in the trees up there.  No sign of Harry.  No sign of the patronus either.

Once again something catches his eye fleetingly as he pounds into the clearing, but Ron can't spare the attention for it now.  If there's someone - or something - out there with malign intent, he'll just have to deal with it.  His greater concern is the pile of clothes on the side of a pool in the middle of the clearing and the gaping hole in the ice. There's only one conclusion to be drawn from that.

For a split second Ron dithers on the brink.  Harry might yet reappear.

But he doesn't and in the dark depths of the water there's no discernible movement.  In that moment Ron casts aside every doubt, fear and selfish thought.  Everything in his world now rests upon Harry; everything that is not Harry, including Ron himself, is irrelevant.  He has to get Harry out of there, no matter the cost.

Without stopping to think or even to remove his shoes, Ron jumps in after him.

~ finis ~